


For A Tin Star

by Mab (Mab_Browne)



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Alternate Universe - Movie Fusion, Alternate Universe - Western, Community: sentinel_thurs, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-16
Updated: 2011-10-16
Packaged: 2017-10-24 16:53:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/265755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mab_Browne/pseuds/Mab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blair has a hard choice to make.  AU fusion with a well known movie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For A Tin Star

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the mini-movies challenge at Sentinel Thursday. Please note, this story contains one anti-Semitic slur used by the villain.

Blair straightened his collar. There was no reason to think it was crooked, but he straightened it anyway, with trembling fingers that he rubbed disgustedly against sweaty palms. Then, he knocked on the door in front of him.

“Come in.” The voice was feminine, and assured.

He stepped over the threshold. “Mrs Hobbes,” he said.

She turned in surprise – clearly, she’d expected someone else. There was an open trunk on a table just behind her. Bright ruffles of a dress licked over the side of the trunk, and Lila Hobbes herself wore a dark dress, a travelling dress.

“You!” she said. Then she collected herself. “Mr Sandburg,” she said, her eyes cool and assessing.

Blair gathered his courage. “Jim won’t leave,” he said to her.

She lifted an eyebrow. “Even though the whole town wants him to. After all, if he leaves, then Quinn may shoot him down somewhere else without dirtying this so fine, decent little place.” Her voice was remarkably bitter.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, but I thought,” Blair swallowed. He’d never spoken to this woman before, only seen her at a distance, seen the regretful, courteous nod that Jim would give her sometimes, and from that he’d assumed. But what if his assumption was wrong? “I thought that maybe he was staying because of you.”

She laughed at that. “I’m leaving on the same train that Quinn will arrive on. He’ll come here, and kill Jim and take this town and kill it too. I can’t do business in a dead town, Mr Sandburg.”

Blair bowed his head, his face screwed up in thought, and grief. “Then why?” he burst out. “Why won’t he go?”

“You’re his friend, Mr Sandburg. You know why. Jim’s no fool. Sooner or later, he and Quinn will face each other, and sooner is better. And of course, no doubt he thought that he would have help if he stayed here. Does he have help, Mr Sandburg?”

Blair’s face flamed. The word ‘coward’ was unspoken, but it thrummed in the air, like a message travelling down the wires of a telegraph. Passion broke through Lila’s cool facade. “Just one man,” she said. “Just one man to stand with him, and that will shame the rest of them. I know the sheep called men in this town. Just one, to set the example, and enough will stand with him to give him a fighting chance.”

“I can’t be that man,” he said.

“Why not! You’re his friend, you’re strong, you can aim a gun.”

“No! No, I can’t aim a gun.”

“Won’t, you mean.” The scorn cut like a knife.

Blair tried to calm the shudder of his breath; it slowed, but nothing could calm the rush and pound of his heart. “My mother was a woman like you, Mrs Hobbes,” he said softly. “She was beautiful and brave, and what she wanted was to be left to make her own way. And an angry, vicious man decided that my mother’s courage and her intelligence shamed him, and he shot her down like a dog in the street, and the only people who would take in an orphaned Jewish boy were Quakers. They told me that there are better ways to face the world than with violence, and I believe them, and I have to honour them. Do you understand?” His voice broke, as it hadn’t broken when he’d made this argument to Jim, when he’d urged him to run.

There was silence. Lila’s face softened. “I believe that I do. We should always honour our teachers.”

“I’m – I have a teaching position awaiting me in St Louis. Do you need assistance with your bags, ma’am?” It was a day early; he’d meant to leave tomorrow, and Jim had promised that he would come to St Louis too, once the new marshal arrived. But Jim was staying to fight Quinn, and Blair suspected somehow that Jim wouldn’t forgive his departure now, even if he said that he understood it. So what was one day earlier?

Lila smiled. "I would be most grateful for your assistance.”

Blair was driving Lila’s hired cart down the street, the deserted street with its hard cut shadows under the nooning sky, when they saw Jim. There was a bruise on his face, and his shirt was smeared with dirt on one arm. He stood straight, but there were shadows under his eyes that one hour of struggle had made heavier than five years of keeping the law in a small frontier town. Blair took one look and then turned his head to concentrate on the horses. Jim didn’t have to do this. He’d resigned the marshal’s badge this very morning. Quinn wasn’t his responsibility, and it was only stubborn pride that kept him here, standing alone in that empty street. Quinn’s pride would have been satisfied if Jim had left, surely. Blair knew what broken pride felt like; he’d judged it survivable.

They reached the station just as the train was coming in. Blair saw Quinn’s friends, his gang, surge to meet him, slap him on the back. Quinn’s eyes turned away from his friends only once, to stare at Lila. She stared back with complete self-possession, and then climbed into the train carriage. Blair followed her, and saw from the window Quinn strip off his coat and strap on his gun belt. Then he and his gang walked off towards the town.

The train sat there – an engine was a hungry thirsty beast, it needed water and coal, and there was freight to be unloaded. The whistle to announce the imminent departure had barely wailed away when the clear sound of gunshots was heard by everyone on the train. There was a murmur of concern. Lila flinched the once and then was still. But Blair’s heart rose in his chest, ready to suffocate him and the only way to force it down was to stand up, and to leap from the train, already beginning to lumber into motion and to run, to run like a madman back to the main street.

There was a body there. Blair approached it, his blood roaring in his ears. It wasn’t Jim. He stared down at it, as his mind travelled back nearly twenty years, to see a slender woman instead of this tall man, to see the spill of a skirt rather than the closer fitting shirt and pants. Violent death looked the same, regardless of what it was dressed in. He held his clenched fist to his chest and ran to Jim’s office. It was empty, and he stared out the window at the street outside, sweat beading on his face. On hook beside the window, hung a gun belt and revolver, and Blair turned away to lean against the wall on the other side of the window, revolted – and tempted. He stayed, with the wall at his back, until he heard the sound of breaking glass, and then more shots. He crouched to look out the window. Quinn was coming up the street to his right. The sound of broken glass came from the saddlers across the street. Jim was there. Blair could see the pale smudge of his face as he looked out first one window, and then the other. The tall figure dipped, stumbled almost as its shadow crossed in front of the door of the saddlers, and Blair realised that Jim had been hit. One hand rose to his mouth, but then Jim fired again. He was still alive, and there was only Quinn, only Quinn, so it could be a fair fight. It could be.

Bu then another man came from Blair’s left, crouching behind a horse trough. “I winged him,” Quinn shouted in triumph to his fellow, and the man laughed, pleased, the way that Blair was pleased sometimes by a joke, by Jim’s dry wit. He kept on laughing, like a ringing in Blair’s ears, until the roar of the bullet shattered the sound into silence. Quinn’s friend lay collapsed behind the trough, quite still, quite dead, and Blair stared down at the gun in his hands in horror, until it was smacked away, and Quinn hauled him to his feet with a hand fisted in his hair.

“A kike as a Judas goat,” Quinn hissed. “Quite the irony, don’t you think, _teacher_? My baby brother wrote me, told me all about Ellison’s doings. Out you come now. Won’t take long.” The muzzle of Quinn’s gun bored into Blair’s skin, and he was pushed ahead into the blazing light of the street.

“Got myself a bargaining chip, Ellison. Come out, and he’ll live. Stay there, and there’ll be some highly educated brains scattered all over the dirt.”

“You’ll kill him anyway,” Jim shouted.

“Maybe I will, but leastways if you come out he won’t be dead precisely because of you. What do you say?”

Blair stared. His scalp tingled and burned where Quinn’s hand lay bunched in his hair, and his mouth was dry. “Don’t,” he tried to call, “I don’t matter.” He tried, but his mouth was so dry he couldn’t do more than croak, like a carrion crow. The door opened, slowly, and there Jim was, his gun at the ready, but he couldn’t shoot because Blair was shielding Quinn. ‘Shoot!’ Blair thought. ‘Do it!’ Jim could make the shot, Blair knew he could. There was only silence, heavy as the toll of the church bell, and Blair twisted, ignoring the tearing of his scalp as he shoved his elbow into Quinn’s gut as hard as he could and then dropped to his knees in the dust.

A gunshot roared through the air and then another. Something blocked out the sun and Blair stared up to see Jim. There was blood on his shirt. Jim holstered his gun and extended his good hand without a word. Blair took it and leaned against Jim, sick and glad at the same time. The street, so empty and so silent before, was a rush of activity. Men, women, children, for God’s sake, staring down at Quinn’s body, laughing and pointing. Jim’s face was hard as he looked around him, and Blair wasn’t sure if the arm around his shoulders was to hold up him, or to hold up his friend.

“Hey, Sandburg.” Jim’s voice was soft but it carried through the noise of the crowd straight to Blair’s ears, to Blair’s heart. “This other arm of mine isn’t so good. And I don’t think I need this any more.” Jim’s chin jerked downwards, to the tin star pinned to his vest. “Take it off for me, will you?”

Blair reached out with fumbling fingers and lifted the star from its anchorage. He stared at it, shiny against the skin of his hand, and he let it drop to the ground. Jim didn’t protest that. He only steered them together down the street, away from the gaggle of staring, gossiping people.

**Author's Note:**

> The movie was High Noon, for those not into classic Westerns.


End file.
